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Last night I killed my wife...
Jan. 16th, 2008 08:21 amWell, I killed my wife Tammy's character, in my D&D game. I run it each Tuesday.
What I find interesting about this is how little control I had over the outcome. The setting was this: while searching through a series of rooms underground, looking for a magical quarterstaff with which they can defeat the Lord of the Demonskar, they came across a fire giant working at his forge. Words were exchanged and battle was entered... my wife's character, Hirate, closed with the Giant, as she's more or less the close in fighter, or one of them.
Weapons fly. The Giant is a huge and sturdy thing, and takes damage like a sponge. He hits twice every round like clockwork, dispensing a lot of damage.
And then... another character, the Professor, lets loose a confusion spell. The confusion spell, unlike a number of other spells in D&D, doesn't hurt or kill the recipient, but removes his control - and instead of placing the control in someone else's hands, it removes it entire - relagating the targets actions to the result of a random dice roll. Immediately after the Confusion spell it's the Giant's turn, so I roll - 90 - and get 'Attack nearest target'. That being my wife's character, I pound away at her - no choice - and get a critical - 68 points of damage. In D&D this is sometimes a mortal blow, even at her level, and after we establish that the character still lives, I have no choice but to swing again - and hit - and that blow drives her down into death. Ugh.
Distressing, but not much choice on my part, due to the spell. And not much choice on Tammy's part, due to her positioning - she'd been enlarged to face the Giant, and has the most hit points of the group. It was just a bad circumstance that went wrong suddenly and catastrophicly, just like things sometimes will go wrong in real life. And there's not much you can do when that sort of thing happens other than picking up the refuse and taking care of the mess.
Which is a lot easier in a game than it is in real life, thank goodness.
What I find interesting about this is how little control I had over the outcome. The setting was this: while searching through a series of rooms underground, looking for a magical quarterstaff with which they can defeat the Lord of the Demonskar, they came across a fire giant working at his forge. Words were exchanged and battle was entered... my wife's character, Hirate, closed with the Giant, as she's more or less the close in fighter, or one of them.
Weapons fly. The Giant is a huge and sturdy thing, and takes damage like a sponge. He hits twice every round like clockwork, dispensing a lot of damage.
And then... another character, the Professor, lets loose a confusion spell. The confusion spell, unlike a number of other spells in D&D, doesn't hurt or kill the recipient, but removes his control - and instead of placing the control in someone else's hands, it removes it entire - relagating the targets actions to the result of a random dice roll. Immediately after the Confusion spell it's the Giant's turn, so I roll - 90 - and get 'Attack nearest target'. That being my wife's character, I pound away at her - no choice - and get a critical - 68 points of damage. In D&D this is sometimes a mortal blow, even at her level, and after we establish that the character still lives, I have no choice but to swing again - and hit - and that blow drives her down into death. Ugh.
Distressing, but not much choice on my part, due to the spell. And not much choice on Tammy's part, due to her positioning - she'd been enlarged to face the Giant, and has the most hit points of the group. It was just a bad circumstance that went wrong suddenly and catastrophicly, just like things sometimes will go wrong in real life. And there's not much you can do when that sort of thing happens other than picking up the refuse and taking care of the mess.
Which is a lot easier in a game than it is in real life, thank goodness.
